Certain wireless communications protocols, such as those in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 family of standards, define a variety of features, some of which may be mandatory and others of which may be optional. In order to establish connections, wireless communications devices operating under such standards may first exchange information defining which features each device supports. The above exchange permits the devices to select parameters for a connection that are compatible with the capabilities of each device participating in the connection. In standards such as the 802.11ad standard, devices are configured to signal their capabilities in capabilities elements, which contain values for each capability available under the standard. The values indicate, for example, whether or not the device supports the relevant capability, or indicate a level of functionality corresponding to a given capability (e.g. a maximum data rate).
As wireless communication standards enable increased throughput, the standards also introduce additional complexity, for example in the form of broader feature sets, and particularly broader sets of optional features. For example, each of the 802.11b, 802.11e, 802.11n, 802.11ac and 802.11ad standards, respectively, introduced features beyond those in the preceding standards. Future enhancements to the 802.11 family of standards, such as the 802.11ay enhancement to 802.11ad, are expected to introduce yet more features to increase throughput. Consequently, the capabilities elements mentioned above have grown in length to the point where they are cumbersome to deploy in certain situations. For example, the capabilities element may be omitted from beacons in the 802.11ad standard due to its length. Such omission reduces the time required to transmit beacons, but also requires wireless devices to exchange additional frames to obtain the necessary information to establish connections with each other. Meanwhile, when the capabilities elements are included in frames exchanged between devices, the capabilities consume ever greater bandwidth.